Disbanded J6 committee failed to safeguard evidence on Capitol Hill security failures, GOP Oversight subcommittee chair exposes

08/18/2023 / By Belle Carter

A Republican lawmaker has exposed that the House select committee that oversaw the January 6 Capitol “riot” failed to adequately preserve documents, data and video depositions, including communications it had with the Biden White House. In fact, the now-disbanded committee even destroyed much of what it collected over more than a year of investigation, arousing speculations of a cover-up and another “hidden agenda.”

It also was not able to provide any evidence that it looked into Capitol Hill security failures on the day of the riot, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the Committee on House Administration, told Fox News Digital, which was the first news outlet to release the story.

As per Loudermilk, no evidence was ever indexed, and there was no table of contents index. This is irregular because, at this level of investigation, a database should have been established. All information is digitized and indexed. “We got nothing like that. We just got raw data,” Loudermilk said. “So, it took us a long time going through it and one thing I started realizing is we don’t have anything much at all from the Blue Team [which was to have investigated security lapses].”

Loudermilk further disclosed that the “Blue Team” was dissolved before it could probe the issue of security lapses at the Capitol. According to him, the “hidden agenda” of the committee is to put the blame on former President Donald Trump. And true enough, the ex-POTUS has since been indicted for allegedly inspiring the riot.

“We’ve got lots of depositions, we’ve got lots of subpoenas, we’ve got video and other documents provided through subpoenas by individuals. But we’re not seeing anything from the Blue Team as far as reports on the investigation they did looking into the actual breach itself,” he said. “What we also realized we didn’t have was the videos of all the depositions.”

Moreover, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was convened by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi under chairman Rep. Benny Thompson. Though the committee was to have been composed of eight Democrats and five Republicans, Pelosi rejected two GOP nominees and handpicked two anti-Trump Republicans instead.

The committee also spent millions of dollars on its extensive staff of lawyers, including former prosecutors. It conducted over 1,000 interviews of witnesses who testified, usually under oath, in closed-door depositions and only a few were called to testify publicly at hearings. All of these were reportedly scripted, with committee members reading from teleprompters. Videos and transcripts were made, but only a few clips were shown to the public, and only a few transcripts were released, Loudermilk revealed.

Republicans also suspected that the committee was communicating with President Joe Biden’s White House, and with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to perhaps circumvent witnesses’ procedural rights in obtaining material for future prosecutions.

McCarthy already demanded J6 committee preserve all records right after the midterms

Back in November 2022, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee, shortly after GOPs won the House back in the midterm elections, demanding that it preserve all records and transcripts. The House Administration Committee also made a similar request to Thompson. McCarthy vowed to hold hearings this year on the security failures that led to the U.S. Capitol breach.

“It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people,” he wrote. “The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts.” Back then, Thompson and committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) wrote to the White House and said they would, by law, preserve all of the committee’s materials, and that they would pass into the custody of the National Archives.

But in a letter to Loudermilk, the Democrat lawmaker admitted that the committee had not preserved what he called “temporary” materials, which included videos and transcripts that were not used “in public hearings or official publications” of the committee, or to “further its investigative activities.” (Related: STAGED: Viral video reveals cops went undercover as Antifa in the crowd during J6 U.S. Capitol protest.)

Experts slammed them for squandering millions and the time they spent gathering raw evidence. Conservative radio host Mark Levin pointed out that the committee’s destruction of its own records is an attempt to obstruct future Republican investigations of its work.

Naturally, this effectively denied Trump access to the evidence, which may potentially help his defense in the criminal prosecutions that the committee itself had urged the DOJ to launch. And it also prevented other witnesses from clearing their names.

According to Breitbart, this action may be a personal move against Loudermilk. The committee accused him publicly of helping the rioters by giving a tour of the Capitol on the day before the January 6 event. Thompson and Cheney claimed to have evidence implicating him. “It was only because Capitol Police were able to review surveillance footage that they were able to conclude that Loudermilk had done nothing wrong, and wrote to the committee to exonerate him, saying that the representative had just been showing constituents around,” the article read.

Meanwhile, the DOJ has not launched any investigation on Thompson or the committee for their destruction of documents.

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